[neilv]

The US should just find a way to quietly share literature access with the Russians, rather than letting piracy be promoted and facilitated for US consumers as freedom-fighter "archiving".

Between all the piracy, and all the AI training and the purchase/visitor-circumventing AI services, the practice of writing and publishing genuinely good work is being wiped out.

We're killing the goose that lays the eggs, for selfish gain.

[TFNA]

This ship has sailed for academic publications, and academics define that term very liberally because we want to read everything, fiction included. The shadow libraries started off as a way for scholars in ex-Soviet countries in particular (but also India, SE Asia, etc.) to access literature that simply wasn’t available in their country. But the shadow libraries proved so successful and convenient that academics in all countries are using them now, even if they have access to official subscription services. I use AA several times a day and so do the researchers around me in my office; at conferences, if the presenter mentions an interesting publication, the whole room immediately opens AA on their laptops, etc.

Even if projects like AA didn’t have nation-level support, academics would find a way to keep as much of it as possible going. After all, we’re the ones who compiled the bulk of pre-2020 material, and we’re the ones who do all the hard work of scanning from our institutional libraries stuff that doesn’t exist anywhere in digital form.

[logicchains]

>the practice of writing and publishing genuinely good work is being wiped out.

Most of the best literature in the English language was written before modern IP law was even a thing. There's very little good literature written by authors primarily motivated by money.

[Jtarii]

How much of that literature was written by wealthy landowners who already had little need for money?

[mr_toad]

Well, you needed the means to get an education, since most of the poor in those days were illiterate, which is something of an impediment to becoming a successful writer.

I can only think of one writer off hand who wasn’t a wealthy landowner, although it is a particularly notable example; that of William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare wasn’t poor (his parents seem to be of upper middle class standing), he was able to get a basic (but not a university) education and then pursue an acting career (with perhaps a side hustle as a teacher). Whatever the case he certainly wasn’t independently wealthy before he started writing, he needed to earn a living.

He did seem to be in it for the money (and fame) since he wasn’t just a writer he was an actor, theatre owner, and something of a celebrity, and he did make enough money to become a wealthy landowner by the time he died.

[Tajnymag]

Do you think that in "the old times" authors didn't need money and wrote books just out of a good will?

[boca_honey]

That's just cultural elitism. I hope you meet someone in your life who finds absolute joy in reading young adult romance novels or D&D fantasy books so you can understand how irrelevant "good" literature is. I love Dostoevsky and Verne (and D&D novels, especially those written by R.A. Salvatore), but I would never judge the modern "IPs" that got my daughter into reading.

> best literature

What does that even mean?

[OriginalPenguin]

Everyone has their own opinion as to what the best literature is, just like what the best music is.

But there is also some consensus. For music it would be Beethoven, Mozart, the Beatles, etc.

For literature it would include Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dickens, Austen, Tolkien, and many more. I would bet it will eventually include Stephen King but it's too early to make that call now.

[boca_honey]

There is no such consensus. Those are just popular answers coming from people with eurocentric tastes over the last couple of centuries. Millions in the global south would swap The Beatles for Celia Cruz or Fela Kuti. People in Asia from the 1700s to this day would tell you Tyagaraja is a way better composer than Beethoven and Mozart put together... he is a literal saint in India, actually.

Not to mention, many people would disregard your answer for putting Stephen King (and Tolkien, to a lesser extent) in the same sentence as Tolstoy and Shakespeare.

There is no "better" anything when we talk about culture. No consensus, etc. There are just opinions.

[dartharva]

I know many (including myself) who would never agree to this "consensus"

[inigyou]

The best music is Goa trance. What you're referring to as "best" is actually classic music (or as I like to call it, classic plus music :P).

[jzb]

Do you have stats on that?

I’m not sure piracy or AI training are really affecting book publishing dramatically. But if you have data, I’d be curious to see it. AI scraper bots are a total pain for online publishers and FOSS sites, but AFAIK they’re not really harming book publishing directly.

The consolidation of publishers and Amazon’s own practices are probably worse for authors than “piracy”.

[notpushkin]

Russians will just share it back (I’m saying that as a Russian). And if not Russians, then somebody else will.

What you can do is make sure people can pay you easily, and not put (a lot of) hurdles in your readers way. And when people can’t afford to pay... maybe let them enjoy your work still, and you’ll get a couple more loyal fans who would pay you when they’re able to.

At least this was my world view before AI has arrived and ruined^W disrupted everything. Now I’m not so sure.

[mjburgess]

Possibly but this act of governmental self-harm is useful to The People. We live in a world where if your valuation is ~1T you can more or less just do what you like. And the work of The People is stolen from you and launderd.

In such a world, isnt it useful that governments are stupid enough to give adversaries reasons to undermine it? When the government props up a corporate tyranny domestically, and racketeering, should we make a temporary alliance with all its enemies?

(Eg., the provision to AI companies of all corporate secretes and competitive practices via prompts, eventually to be used against their capital interests and their labour interests).

[LearnYouALisp]

So when will the American people form an "Incorporation" to lobby against business for them?

[inigyou]

AI publishing is just email spam, but for books. When the cost of creating worthless text is low, people do it.

[WarmWash]

>We're killing the goose that lays the eggs, for selfish gain

We already did that when the internet collectively agreed decades ago that everything digital should be free for anyone.

We're now 20 years downstream of ad-blocking being a virtuous good, and piracy being the ultimate show of liberty, and now suddenly everyone cares about the creator's revenue stream.

The mask slipped and unsurprisingly the internet is a bunch of selfish morally stunted children. Some of them even pushing 50 years old.

Yes, I am talking to you with the 4TB of pirated content, proud of not loading any ads in the last 15 years, and getting enraged over LLM training.

[lelanthran]

> Yes, I am talking to you with the 4TB of pirated content, proud of not loading any ads in the last 15 years, and getting enraged over LLM training.

That's oddly-specific :-)

In any case, I have no pirated content that I know off, neither proud nor ashamed of blocking ads[1], but I still get annoyed that a bunch of VCs can use their invested-into companies to launder all the worlds IP, then sell it back to them.

[1] Who feels proud of blocking ads? It's like feeling proud of tying your shoelaces: "Good job, well done, but that's the expectation, son".